Demo Impressions Part 34

Featuring: Insectile, MOMO Crash, Pancitomerge, Panik, and Unbox the Room

If any of these still have demos when I post this, they’ll have a (*) as always.

Insectile*

You know, I almost didn’t play this one. Usually, I click off if a game doesn’t have a trailer on their Steam page. I was going to do just that for this game, as I like to see a trailer to get a feel for the gameplay and if it’d like the game or not, but I didn’t. The screenshots were just too cute and the two screenshots that weren’t shots of the overworld did grab my interest. Plus, having a demo really helped. So, I downloaded it and was set to play it after I woke up and had some free time on my hands.

Insectile has you play as a little mushroom guy who just woke up for the day and minding their own business. That is, until you hear someone calling for help. You help, of course, and this is where it all starts. It turns out that this world is made up of those who are mushrooms and those who are insects (aka insectiles). The relationship between the two seem to be a bit complicated from what I can gather, but Insectiles are closer to being like Pokemon considering you can capture them. Anyway, you end up saving Loma who is an Insectile researcher who is wanting to bring both Insectiles and mushrooms closer together. Loma was actually a mushroom, but an encounter with a particular Insectile he was researching turned him into an Insectile (to be specific, to what looks like a butterfly). While Loma wants to turn back to continue his mission, he does see the silver lining and now you’re here to help him! You soon learn there is a way to turn Loma back after getting three rare morph components from specific, tough Insectiles. Loma decides to tag along on the adventure, both since it’ll help with his research since you will be capturing and battling Insectiles and to help guide you. Alongside this, you do also get a rival, another mushroom named Agar who is also going around capturing Insectiles. Not to help any of his fellow mushrooms or to help the complicated relationship. Nope. It’s to get revenge. Looks like you’ll be running into Agar (or he’ll be running into you?) throughout the game and you’ll battle his Insectiles at certain story milestones.

Gameplay here is actually pretty good. Your character moves at the perfect speed (I never tried to run faster) and he can jump so you can clear obstacles like vegetation or sticks. You’ll be exploring the wonderfully cute environments and the first area at least seems to be well designed with each area being unique. There are also save points scattered around and so far, they are placed pretty well. How they look also seems to affect how you’ll be traversing them, which is pretty cool. There’s even a hidden area that you can find which adds some difficulty to traversal. It’ll be interesting to see how the other areas will look and bring to the table. Oh and the game does make sure you’re not going in areas you shouldn’t as it does block you until you find a key (which you usually just explore around to find it or doing the main quest).

There are also no random encounters here as Insectiles are shown in the overworld. How they act depends on the species, but some walk around, some throw projectiles, some just hang out, and some hide (with some hiding until you interact with the spot or coming out to munch of some leaves). They do respawn when you leave the screen and go back in, but they are pretty easy to dodge when you know their patterns. When you run into the Insectile, or the Insectile runs into you, you’ll go into battle.

Battles here are pretty easy to get the hang of and while it’s simple, there is complexity here. Each battle will have your opponent(s) laid out on a square grid where each species also has their own shape and health. You go first and you do have a few options. To damage your enemies, all you need to do is lay out your Insectiles on top of them. Each square an Insectile takes up is a hit and you can rotate and place your Insectiles anywhere on the grid. You can only hold 4 Insectiles at a time in the beginning, but you can place as many that can fit. Once you set them down and ready, you just press the button and you’ll see them deal the damage. Then the enemy will deal damage to you. You can also capture Insectiles, but they have to be the only one left on the grid and I’m pretty sure it’s easier to capture them if they’re on low health and have a certain status effect, but I’m not too sure considering this is only the first area. Don’t worry, you don’t need an item to capture them and if all your jars (which hold your battle Insectiles) they automatically go to storage (which you can access at any time in the overworld). You can also do melee which will put down a 1 square mushroom and use items (which mainly are health items so far). Then, finally, you can flee. Once you finish an encounter, you’ll get a ranking based on how well you did (which seems to be based on how many turns you take) and get some apples which is this game’s currency.

However, like I said before, there’s more to this. Certain species also has certain characteristics. Aside from the obvious of having different shapes (which do play a part in placement), they do have different effects. Like doing extra damage if it’s over an enemy Insectile or putting a status effect on them like Scare. You can see what an Insectile does when hovering over them and see what each square of the Insectile will do (which thankfully shows over on the grid when you’re placing them down). In addition, enemy Insectiles can also do status effects (there is a bubble by their health bar so you’ll know) and they can even put out an obstacle that will mess with your placement as it’ll take up a grid square. So, as you can guess, building party synergy is going to be important as well as having shapes that can account for when there’s grid squares blocked. I did also do some testing and I did confirm what I thought. Damage and effects are dealt by row and go from left to right; so if you want a status effect to be on first before any damage on a long enemy you gotta make sure it’s on top. Placement is key, especially if you want to get a perfect ranking.. Also, for bosses (like the big Insectiles or battles with Agar), you’ll have multiple phases, each with different Insectiles and placements, to help make it feel different. Which did work and there’s even a joke that I couldn’t help but laugh at. It’s a great joke that landed very well.

Oh, and there are mushroom towns here. You encounter the first one in the demo, as that’s where Loma lives. Based on this first town, it looks like you’ll be able to buy items and get side quests (though, it doesn’t seem like there’s an in-game tracker). In addition, you can check the bestiary and Loma will tell you a fun fact if you achieve a perfect ranking on their encounter (not sure how the Insectiles that are more like bosses will be handled in this regard though). Something I just noticed too is when you’re going to storage, each Insectile has a little blurb about them on why they have the effect that they have. Like the Citris Sipper, the lemon is what hits for damage but since its body is scary those two squares causes Scare. Nice little detail.

I’m really glad that I ended up playing Insectile. It was a really cute, fun, and a pretty unique creature collector. The only problem that I had was that I personally found it difficult jumping on the small platforms that’s on the water. Definitely check it out and hopefully they’ll have a trailer up on their Steam page soon. This demo includes the first area of the game and ends when you’re setting out to the next. I did try to explore and do everything, which took me about 45 minutes to do.

MOMO Crash

Out Now

Definitely a game for Thighza fans haha. When I saw this demo I was intrigued not only cause it looked like a rhythm game, but because it looked like there were thighs being used to interact with the notes flying down. So of course I downloaded it to try it out.

MOMO Crash is a rhythm game where you’ll, of course, be hitting notes once they reach the hit indicator on the bottom. However, there is some unique theming around this. After picking which character out of the available three you want to play as and picking a song, you’re sent to the usual vertical track. Except, it takes a note out of Muse Dash as the character you chose won’t just be to standing to the side, but her thighs are sitting at the end of the track. That’s because the action is all with the thighs! The notes also go along with the theming as which action you’ll do depends on what note is coming down. The controls is pretty simple here and notes are visually different from one another so you know what you need to do on the fly. There are blue souls which you’ll need to do a quick tap to catch and purify them with your thighs. Then viruses which you quickly kick them away. And finally cats which are the game’s hold notes as you let them just sit in your lap until they leave. Each action will also be reflected in the character artwork on the left (Daia’s is so cute) and I believe after so many notes the character will make a sound and they’ll have a close up artwork pop up on the right (which lowkey does get annoying).

This demo includes one character and three songs (plus the tutorial). So far, I liked it. I’m not too sure about the song choices (though I think part of it was me getting my hopes up thinking Pomp and Circumstance was the Vocaloid version haha), but I do really like the artwork and the theming around you purifying souls with the power of thighs. Though, the game doesn’t play a preview of the song you’re hovering over and it was weird how the game teased an early failure state with how souls you failed to purify or viruses you didn’t kick but goes away by themselves after a while or if you hit a successful note. Going to keep an eye on this one either way.

Pancitomerge*

Out Now

Will this one win you over on these merge games? Not really, but I do give it some extra points for being cute and going an extra step in the bakery theming here. Basically, each object you’ll be wanting to merge into new objects are all bakery items. Specifically Mexican baked goods. If you’ve never played these types of merge games, you get an object to drop (with you being able to see what you’ll be dropping next) into a tall container (in this it’s a paper bag in a woven basket) and you want to match those objects to discover and create the next tier object. You also have to make sure you’re thinking ahead so you can have already placed objects collide and merge and so you won’t end the level cause you have too many objects (and not place them so weirdly there’s empty pockets). Definitely make sure you look at what the next object is cause there were a couple times where I would have placed differently if I looked. There is an added mechanic here, though. Every couple seconds there will be a customer asking for one of your baked goods. You don’t have to, as there doesn’t seem to be any consequences for not, but they do change their request after a couple seconds. This can help you out as you can take out a baked good that might be clogging up the bag; but you can accidentally click an object you wanted to keep.

So yeah, it’s good if you like these types of games and I did like the added selling mechanic. The demo only has one bakery, but it does seem like the full game will have multiple bakeries all with their own themes, menu items, and customers.

Panik

Out Now

This one is a game that is a bit confusing when you’re just looking at screenshots or the trailer, but does make sense when you actually go into the game.

Panik is a puzzle game all about these little guys called panikers. The game starts out pretty simple so you can get the hang of things, but you’ll soon see that it does get a bit tricky. There are various different panikers that you’ll come across throughout the game. There’s the ones with the crowns, which are the ones you can control right from the get go. These don’t panic unless you fail the level and these actually help soothe the other panikers. Then there’s the basic no hat panikers which panic unless they’re by a crown paniker (or by another paniker that’s beside a crown paniker). There’s also a handful of other ones you’ll come across that all have different actions tied to their hat; like ones that move differently or the ninja that spawns other ninjas. Anyway, no matter which kind of paniker(s) you have on the level, they all will be on a board. The goal for each level is to fill up all the checkerboard tiles with a paniker. Base panikers can only move three tiles and you can see how many moves they can do. Easy right? Well, during the tutorial levels, but it does get more tricky as you get further on. You’ll have to figure out where, when, and what order you need to move the panikers so you can finish the level. While the demo doesn’t have any hint system (and I do hope there is one in the full release) you can restart the level or rewind the last move you did.

This one was quite interesting and I’m glad I decided to try out the demo. It wasn’t as confusing as I thought it would be and the puzzles here were pretty good. This demo does contain a good amount of puzzles and the game does tease secrets being in levels (they’re just not implemented into the demo version). The only thing I was a bit meh on was the commentary that you’ll get at the beginning of levels. I’m just not someone that’s into meta humor or meta commentary. Also I kept mixing up restart and rewind, but that’s maybe just a problem I had. Anyway, if you like puzzles you’ll probably like Panik.

Unbox the Room

Out Now

Another Unpacking-esque game to fill in the void that Unpacking leaves once you finish the game. Unbox the Room has you be put into the shoes of a new intern for a company named Unbox the Room (roll credits). The company already offers services to boxing up and moving customer’s belongings with care, but they recently added a new service due to customer demand. They’re adding interior designers so they not only will be moving their customer’s belongings, but also placing them! You are one of the new interior designer interns and for the first handful of levels you’ll have Alex your mentor to help you get the hang of things before you’re let loose.

Gameplay here is pretty self explanatory. Each level, you’ll get a room and boxes and you’re goal is to unbox and arrange all the items. Most of them are small items and usually go into categories. Like books, plants, plushies, dishes, and electronics. You can put them anywhere you want, on the bed, floor, shelves, and of course the furniture with drawers and cabinets can be open so you can store things in there. You even have the ability to move the big furniture pieces and some items you’ll be unboxing or unloading (as towards the demo it gets revealed that there will be levels where you have a box moving truck with everything in it) will be furniture. Some levels will also have multiple rooms that you’ll switch between to place items and some customers will have requests. There also seems to be a lot of freedom here as there isn’t any check to make sure you put the items exactly in the place the game wants them to be.

I found Unbox the Room pretty okay. The art is cute enough, it’s relaxing, and there is a lot of freedom on how you unpack things; but spacing (like between books) looks a bit weird and there are some weird choices with the rooms. There were also some items I had no idea what they were and there doesn’t seem to be any way to re-read the customer request. I’m also a bit unsure about the level telling the story of the client through the items you’re unpacking. Well, anyway, if you’ve been wanting more Unpacking gameplay, this may fill in that void.